Lizardskin

by Carsten Stroud

  She started to say something, but Beau turned the volume down. The cross-talk would carry a long way. He popped the clamp on the shotgun rack and tugged it out, thinking what every cop thinks when he has to get out of the car alone in a bad place.

  If it comes down to you or me, it’s gonna be you.

  8

  2355 Hours–June 14–Arrow Creek, Montana

  The night wind had a strange scent of pine and eucalyptus trees and something sharp. The moon was still back in the east somewhere, shining for other people. The Milky Way showed through the thin cloud cover like sparks through silk. Beau felt the chill of the high plains night on his cheeks and the backs of his hands. The shotgun was a heavy bar of cold iron. Under his boots, the sand gave way and made it hard to walk. The silence closed up around him like a pool of rising water as his breath scraped in his throat. It seemed to take him a year to walk twenty feet over to Charlie Four car, sitting in the middle of a penumbra of hard white light, the twin shafts from the high beams canted up into the sky, pillars of white marble eroding into an infinity of stars.

  As he leaned into the driver’s side door to shut off the lights, the muscles of his back and shoulder blades coiled up and grew cold. He was listening so hard, he could hear his own blood in his ears, listening for that snap and the thrum of a shaft coming in from the dark. It struck him then that this was a very old experience in this territory—a man alone in the dark, waiting for an arrow to come whistling in from somewhere beyond the light, perhaps to indicate the direction of eternity.

  The coulee seemed suddenly alive with ghosts and whispers. His hand shook as he flicked the lever, and the pillars of white light disappeared. It was standard in police cars to disconnect the door switch for the dome light, so he left the door open. He didn’t want to make any unnecessary noise. The key was still in the ignition. Whatever had distracted Benitez had happened fast enough to make him forget about locking up the cruiser and taking the keys.

  Benitez had taken his portable radio. Beau thought about calling him on the radio, but then thought better of it. He’d had plenty of time to respond when Beth was calling him. In this silence, the sound of a police radio would carry a long way. He had a feeling that Benitez would have answered if he could.

  Beau tried to place the land around this part of Arrow Creek. Low hills and valleys covered with prairie grass, getting sandy down the slope that led to Arrow Creek. The creek itself was a wide shallow meandering collection of pools and channels under a scattering of cottonwoods and chamiso bushes. The banks on this side were low and dry, hidden from the Ballantine side road by a series of shallow hills.

  Benitez had gotten himself stuck trying to turn around in a narrow road. He had backed off the pavement and gotten his wheels into the coarse white sand along the shoulders. Then he had rocked it a bit, misjudged it, and slipped even farther into this low sandy trough—actually, you could call it an arroyo, just as Benitez had named it.

  The arroyo led through a gap in the chain of hills, west toward Arrow Creek. This arroyo had probably been part of the river at one time, but sand and wind and the ways of water never like to repeat themselves.

  Beau had an old army flashlight, a bent-neck affair with a red glass lens. He liked to use it on alarm calls, when he was clearing rooms in a warehouse or a private home. The red light didn’t carry far. It left you a chance for surprise.

  In its red glow, Beau could see the sign of heavy boots. And up there a couple of yards, a clear palmprint in harder dirt. Benitez had fallen here, stopped himself with his left hand. He was likely carrying that shotgun in his right. And that meant he was hunting someone.

  There was a freshening wind down here in the arroyo, strong enough to move the sand. So Benitez must have gone through here only a short time ago. The edges of his tracks were only slightly rounded, and the palmprint was very clear.

  What had he heard? Or seen?

  There were no tire tracks in the area. Just the Munchkin’s footprints.

  Beau stood awhile with his eyes closed, rushing his night vision, inhaling the cold air, and listening hard.

  A silky hiss off to his left. Sand falling down the slope of the arroyo. The wind in the long grass at the top of the hill to his right. It carried the smell of water from the Arrow Creek a few hundred feet away.

  And that strange sharp scent, under the pine smell. The smell of smoke. A fire … somewhere up the coulee. In this night wind, the smell of a fire could carry for miles. But it smelled too strong for that. Benitez would have smelled it, sitting in the sand and swearing at his cruiser, he would have taken a breath and smelled that. Even Benitez would have been cop enough to wonder who would be camping out on Arrow Creek tonight. And stupid enough to think he could go find out all by himself.

  The Munchkin’s tracks led off up the arroyo, a straight line of bootmarks going away to the bend in the channel. Beau decided to climb up the slope a bit and stay in the grass. If Benitez had walked into something, it would be stupid to follow along like a pull-toy.

  He did it as quietly as he could, but he was huffing a bit by the time he reached the top of the low hill. He tried not to think about rattlesnakes in the long grass as he worked his way along the ridge toward the river. The night was chilly enough to slow them down, but a foot in the wrong place would be too irritating to let pass.

  He knew that there was one more low basin, then another rise of the land. It dropped away after that, down to the banks of Arrow Creek. It stood to reason that anyone camping around here would set up by the river.

  And the smell of smoke was getting stronger now. He stayed away from the crests, trying not to silhouette himself against the starlight. Now that his eyes were adjusting, he could see the faint silver light from the stars lying on the prairie grass like frest frost. The shadows were as black as a crack in the world.

  He eased his way to the top of the last slope. The land fell away fifty or sixty feet down to the riverbank. He could hear the chirp and gurgle of shallow water running and, through the black tangle of the cottonwoods, could see the soft glimmering of starlight on the water.

  The smoke-smell was stronger now, musty and thick. He came down the hillside as slowly as he could, moving from shadow to shadow, the shotgun braced.

  There was something large and black out in the shallows of the creek. He reached the cottonwoods. Under his feet he could feel the wet gravel. The sound of the water drowned out everything else now, making Beau feel very exposed. He flicked on the red flashlight. A bloodred circle glinted off gray metal.

  Bob Gentile’s morgue wagon was out there in the middle of the creek. The water was running around the hubcaps. He shut the light off. The trouble with flashlights was, they told other people as much about you as they told you about them.

  They must have driven the wagon up the creekbed from somewhere down the side road. Clever. It’d leave no tracks. The windows of the wagon were tinted black. Nothing moved, either in it or around it. Stepping carefully, leading with the muzzle of his shotgun, he followed a sandbar ridge out to the wagon.

  The crossing took him a few minutes, waiting a heartbeat after every step, expecting a shot to flare out of the blackness around the morgue wagon.

  The driver’s door was unlocked. He popped it open as softly as he could, ramming the shotgun into the gap, ready to fire. Nothing. He used the shotgun barrel to smash the domelight. In the red glow of his flash, he could see that the CB radio had been pulled out of the dashboard. The police set was smashed in. Papers were scattered around the interior. There was a gray metal coffin sitting on stainless-steel rails in the rear.

  Beau went around the back and opened the tailgate door. The coffin moved easily and silently on the stainless rails. He pulled it out far enough to reach the latches. The lid came up and breathed the scent of violets and lavender and stale urine at him. He shined the red flash into the black interior.

  Two wide wet eyes stared up at him, blinking and wild in a thin childish face. Th
e boy was whimpering, and he struggled to bring his hands up to protect his face. They were bound to his waist with thin cords. A rag had been stuffed into his mouth and strapped in place with a leather belt. Another leather strap had been pulled around his ankles. A wide dark patch around his crotch explained the smell of urine.

  This had to be Peter Hinsdale, frightened near to collapse. All the kid could see was a red light in his eyes. Beau reached out and covered his mouth. The boy arched and cried out under the gag. The smell of urine was overpowering now. The kid had wet himself in fear. Or he had been in here so long that there had been little choice in the matter.

  “Kid. You gotta be quiet. Quiet. It’s okay. I’m a cop.”

  It took Hinsdale a minute or two, struggling against Beau’s gloved hand on his mouth. Beau kept saying it, in a low whisper, until finally the kid believed him.

  “Okay … you gonna be quiet now? They’re still around here somewhere, so you gotta be very, very quiet. You understand?”

  The boy closed his eyes. Tears ran sideways down into his hair. He opened his eyes again and nodded once.

  “Okay. I’m gonna get this off you. You promise to be quiet?”

  Another nod.

  Beau slipped the belt buckle and tugged it out from under the boy’s head. His mouth was stopped with an oily rag. He pulled it out, and the kid sucked in a long ragged gasp.

  “You’re a policeman?” His voice was raw and high.

  “Sergeant McAllister, Montana Highway Patrol. Who’re you?”

  “I’m Peter … Hinsdale.” He coughed, struggled upright. “I gotta call … my mom.”

  “You will. Just keep it down to a whisper. Let’s get you out of there. Gotta be hard on the nerves, lyin’ in a coffin.”

  He got the cords undone and helped the kid out of the coffin. As soon as he got his feet on the gravel of the riverbed, he staggered a few feet and sat down hard. Beau stepped over to him and crouched down beside him.

  “Peter—Peter, you’re gonna have to stop crying now. We’re in a spot here, and I need your help.”

  Hinsdale’s face was wet and full of childish outrage. “What kind of shit is this anyway? Just take me home! You gotta take me home.”

  “And I will. But right now I need to know how many there were. How many people, and what kind of weapons did they have?”

  Hinsdale sobbed again and shook his head. He put his face in his hands and spoke around them.

  “I don’t know for sure. Four, I think. There was one at the bar. Danny gave him a ride. I told him not to, but Danny was drunk.”

  Hinsdale pulled his face out of his hands.

  “He’s a drunk, Danny is. This’s his fault. I’m gonna sue his ass—” Beau reached out and put a gloved hand over the kid’s mouth.

  Jesus. Another lawsuit? What the hell was the matter with this country? Something bad happened, all anybody could think of was making some money out of it.

  “Kid, shut the fuck up. You hear me? Now I’m gonna ask you again. I gotta know how many and what kind of weapons.”

  As soon as Beau pulled his hand away, the kid flared up and started to raise his voice.

  “That’s abuse! I’m gonna sue you, too. You haveta take me out of here! I’m a victim! I’m gonna—”

  Beau sighed and put his hand over the kid’s mouth again. When the kid jerked his head back, Beau used his left hand to pull his head forward again.

  “Now look, kid—you’re making me sorry I got that gag out. We’re out in the woods with big bad bears all around. You keep shooting your mouth off like that, somebody’s gonna hear it, come back here, sew it shut for you. Are you getting this?”

  He gave the kid’s head a hard shake, feeling his temper running very thin. After a jerk or two, the kid nodded again.

  “So you gonna keep it low?”

  The kid nodded again.

  “Promise?”

  Another nod. Beau slowly relaxed his grip. The kid pulled in a deep breath and looked up at Beau. His eyes were wet and shiny in the starlight. He radiated an infantile rage.

  “I’m a citizen,” he hissed at Beau. “I have rights.”

  “Kid, you have rights as soon as we get back to Billings. Right now you have me. How many?”

  “I’m—there was one at the bar. He came in and started talking to Danny and asked for a ride. I told Danny it was against the rules, but he didn’t pay any mind.”

  “What’d this guy look like?”

  “An Indian. Big and mean-looking. Fifty maybe. Said his name was Earl and he was trying to get to Billings to see his old lady.”

  “And a weapon?”

  The kid shivered again. “He had a knife. One of those big Rambo things with sawteeth. We were about a mile down the road when he pulled it out and stuck it up against Danny’s neck. He reached across me to do it.”

  “Okay. Anybody else?”

  “Two more men and a girl. All Indians. They were waiting in a grain barn at the end of the street. They made me ride in the back here. They had these weird bows and shit. Real high-tech, you know. Like fiberglass or something. Came apart and stored in these metal cases. Lots of arrows and some knives. This Earl guy made Danny drive off the road back near Ballantine. We came up this creek about ten miles. Then they made me get in the coffin.”

  He started to shake again. Beau put a hand on his shoulder.

  “They say anything to you?”

  “Nothing. Just ‘move here’ or ‘get over there.’ The old guy was sick. Coughing all the time, like he had lung cancer or something. He was the guy giving the orders. The other two were younger. Still old, but younger than him. Your age, maybe. Both of them real mean-looking, like bank robbers or something. And strong. When they took the body out the one guy did it like it was nothing.”

  “They say why they wanted the body?”

  “Not to me. But the girl was all over it, crying and carrying on like it was her brother or something. She’s as mean as the rest of them. I was tellin’ them they better let me go or I’d get a lawyer on ’em, and she kicked me.”

  “What’d they do with it? The body?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. When we got this far in the river, they stopped and I got shoved into the coffin. I said I wouldn’t, but they just tied me up and shoved me inside. I am gonna sue them, too.”

  Beau was getting real tired of this kid real fast.

  “Okay. I’m gonna go up the river here, take a look around. You go across to those trees, find a nice dark place, and stay there until we come back.”

  “No way! I’m coming with you. What if they come back?”

  “Listen, son, let me lay it out for you in simple terms. I’m going up the stream to see if I can effect the arrest of a bunch of lunatic Indians, and if I have to, I’ll stick you back in the coffin to keep you out of the way. You follow?”

  “You can’t—”

  “Okay, kid,” he said, pulling him up by his shirt. “Let’s—”

  He heard a wet splash, and gravel moving. The kid screamed, and Beau went back down in a crouch, shoving him away and pivoting on his left foot, bracing, bringing the muzzle up as a dark figure slammed into him. He felt a blaze of heat across his ribs, and then a second higher up.

  He rolled back and brought a knee up hard, feeling it connect with bone and muscle. He had a brief vision of long black hair flying against the stars, and an arm raised, and steel glinting. The arm came down. Beau twisted away, feeling wet gravel and cold water on his back, the shotgun coming up again in an arc. He felt the contact in his hands, and heard the grunt. The figure tumbled left into deeper water.

  Beau was up on his feet. Blood pounded in his throat. The fight was happening in a terrifying silence. No curses or cries, just a rasping breath and a quiet dedication to murder.

  He saw the reflection of stars on water shattered by black movement. He fired, and a shower of white foam exploded in red fire. Gravel and shot skipped across the creek. There was movement to his left. His
ears rang from the shotgun round. Orange afterlights floated across his retinas, blinding him. The smell of gunpowder was everywhere, and the hills rolled with secondary thunder. Someone was running away across the creek.

  The kid, or the one with the knife?

  He swiveled to cover that sound but could not bring himself to fire, and something twisted right at his feet, rising up out of shallow water. He felt another cut across his right thigh. He stepped back and kicked straight out in front of him, catching the man full in the face, sending him back into the water.

  Beau took two steps forward as the man hit the water. The man rolled and tried to come up again, but Beau was on him. He swung the shotgun by the muzzle and felt the shock all the way to his shoulders. There was a sickening crack, and the body racked sideways, stretched out, and splashed into the creek in that final boneless way. A second, smaller splash sounded a few feet to the right. That knife, flying out of his hand.

  Beau moved the shotgun to his left hand, stuck the muzzle into the man’s neck, and pulled him up with his right.

  The body was very light. Under his hands he felt softness and flesh. The long black hair trailed back from a fine-boned skull like seaweed from a shell. One eye was open, and tiny points of white light glinted off the cornea. The smell of blood was thick in Beau’s nostrils. He could hear breath coming from the open mouth, shallow and tentative.

  He had just gunbutted a young girl. Maybe killed her.

  He dragged her body out of the creek and set it down as gently as he could on a bed of prairie grass. He found the portable radio and flicked up the volume.

  A burst of static and sound.

  “—ister!! Where the hell are you? Five eleven!”

  Eustace Meagher’s voice.

  “Meagher?”

  “Beau! Where the fuck are you? We heard that shot.”

  “I’m just past the range here. Come up the coulee. I’m right at the creek, about five hundred feet due west. You find the cruisers?”

  “I’m sitting in yours. Where the hell’s the Munchkin?”

  “Haven’t found him yet. You bring some help?”